Undergoing brain surgery, man plays guitar for 6 hours

PTI | Jul 12, 2013, 05.50 AM IST

NEW YORK: Brave or bizarre ? A US man found a a novel way to help doctors perform a complex brain surgery on him - by playing his guitar! Actor-musician Brad Carter strummed his one-of-a-kind handmade guitar for six hours as doctors operated on him.

Although Carter had to put down the guitar when he began experiencing debilitating hand tremors - his strumming skills came to good use when doctors implanted a wire inside his head, 'New York Daily News' reported.

He used his tunes to guide surgeons through his brain as they implanted a pacemaker to ease the hand tremors that had plagued him for the better part of a decade. Carter's fancy fretwork helped his surgeons locate the best spot for a deep brain stimulation procedure that they hope will ease tremors in his hands that have kept him from his life's passion.

"I've been a guitarist since 1988. Music is my first love. I'm an actor for a living, but I always have music to turn to. It's a part of your soul," Carter, an actor and musician in LA, told NBC's "Today" . Carter began experiencing the hand tremors seven years ago. Medications didn't help, and he had to stop performing as a musician . Doctors diagnosed his condition as a benign essential tremor and elected to try a surgical procedure.

thereby hangs a tale

Solar system has a tail, just like comets: US space agency

AP | Jul 11, 2013, 03.18 AM IST

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Solar system has a tail, just like comets: US space agency

Scientists revealed images showing the tail emanating from the bullet-shaped region of space under the grip of the sun, including the solar system and beyond.

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Our solar system has a tail, just like comets. Now the US space agency can prove it.

Scientists revealed images on Wednesday showing the tail emanating from the bullet-shaped region of space under the grip of the sun, including the solar system and beyond. The region is known as the heliosphere, and the tail is called the heliotail.

The findings are based on data from Nasa's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX.

Scientists always presumed the heliosphere had a tail, but this provides the first real data on its shape.

Chief IBEX investigator David McComas says it's difficult to calculate the length of the heliotail. But the evaporating end of the tail could stretch 100 billion miles.

pilocytic astrocytomas found defects in genes

BERLIN: Scientists have found that an overactive signalling pathway is a common cause in cases of pilocytic astrocytoma, the most frequent type of brain cancer in children.

Scientists coordinated by the German Cancer Research Center (as part of the International Cancer Genome Consortium, ICGC) in 96 gemone analyses of pilocytic astrocytomas found defects in genes involved in a particular pathway.

They believe that drugs can be used to help affected children by blocking components of the signalling cascade.

Pilocytic astrocytomas are the most common childhood brain tumours. These tumours usually grow very slowly. However, they are often difficult to access by surgery and cannot be completely removed, which means that they can recur.

In previous work, researchers led by Professor Dr Stefan Pfister and Dr David Jones had already discovered characteristic mutations in a major proportion of pilocytic astrocytomas.

All of the changes involved a key cellular signalling pathway known as the MAPK signalling cascade. MAPK is an abbreviation for 'mitogen-activated protein kinase'.

This signalling pathway comprises a cascade of phosphate group additions (phosphorylation) from one protein to the next - a universal method used by cells to transfer messages to the nucleus.

MAPK signalling regulates numerous basic biological processes such as embryonic development and differentiation and the growth and death of cells.

"A couple of years ago, we had already hypothesised that pilocytic astrocytomas generally arise from a defective activation of MAPK signalling," said Jones, first author of the study in journal Nature Genetics.

"However, in about one fifth of the cases we had not initially discovered these mutations. In a whole-genome analysis of 96 tumours we have now discovered activating defects in three other genes involved in the MAPK signalling pathway that have not previously been described in astrocytoma," he said.

"Aside from MAPK mutations, we do not find any other frequent mutations that could promote cancer growth in the tumours. This is a very clear indication that overactive MAPK signals are necessary for a pilocytic astrocytoma to develop," said study director Pfister.

"The most important conclusion from our results is that targeted agents for all pilocytic astrocytomas are potentially available to block an overactive MAPK signalling cascade at various points," said Pfister.

"We might thus in the future be able to also help children whose tumours are difficult to access by surgery," he said.